Last September, members of the Russellville City Council and city officials selected a Kansas company to complete a proposal for the development of a convention center. A month ago, the master development agreement (MDA) was rejected.

To say city officials were not happy with what LodgeWell Development LLC submitted would be an understatement. But work on trying to find a developer to design and build a Russellville Convention Center has not stopped.

“When we originally did this, they (LodgeWell) had all the right answers,” Alderman Randall Horton said during Thursday’s regular City Council meeting. “How we got the proposal we got is still baffling to all of us.”

Since then, the council instructed the convention center committee to negotiate with another developer. Horton said negotiations are ongoing — at a rapid clip — with every company the committee had previously talked to.

“It’s not a deal we want to take two or three years to get a decision, or even a year,” Horton explained. “We want to strike while the iron is hot. By next month, I’d like to have some more positive stuff to report, but we just haven’t had time to get all of the parties in and figure out what’s going to be our best way to go.”

Horton said a convention center probably could have been built if city officials would have said “OK, we’ll do it like every other city, Russellville operates the convention center and we’re responsible for its losses.” That’s what they told LodgeWell, but the developer came back with a MDA that put all the burdens of a convention center on the city.

Horton said the focus has shifted to looking for the best option for a replacement (of LodgeWell) that meets certain guidelines. The main guideline is that the city does not want to operate a convention center.

“Some people doubt whether that can be done, but in all the conversations we’ve had with everybody else, they understand that and they agree that’s how they’re going to try to do it. That’s what we’re pressing for,” Horton said. “Believe it or not, there are very interested parties who want to get in on this thing.”

There are also fundamentals of a proposal that city officials are adhering to, as a result of the proposal by the late John Q. Hammons which fell through years ago. One is the development and construction of a smaller convention center than what was proposed by Hammons.

“That is something we’re going to have to accept, at least on the front end,” Horton said. “The new reality, since 2008 when the economy changed so much, developers are a lot more cautious than they were in 2005 or 2006.

“What they would all like to do is start with smaller units, get their occupancy to a certain level, then add to both the convention center size and the hotel size.

“If you back out of what we want just from our side, and look at it from their side, it’s really a very reasonable proposal.

Their computer tells them one thing, they see something else, and allow a little wiggle room on where you start. And that it is part of the plan, to make it all expandable. I think it makes it easier to get there.”

Also Thursday, the Finance Committee tabled consideration of creating a public works engineer position. Alderman Mark Tripp said he wanted everyone to be on the same page on an engineer’s salary so there are no limitations what the engineer does or specific funding criteria.